


Where the Fine Line Begins

by Tabithian



Series: Fortunes Fade [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU - Comicverse, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2012-11-29
Packaged: 2017-11-19 20:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim knows he has options, but only one that matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Fine Line Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [soot-em-up's plot bunny](http://soot-em-up.tumblr.com/post/35782978236/has-there-been-robin-order-swap-fic-where-dicks), although it may have gone a bit astray somewhere in the middle. *hands*

Tim never really knows if it was a purposeful misstep on his part or mere coincidence the night Bruce caught him following him. (A little of both, perhaps. Gotham is a strange city, different from her sisters and far-flung relatives.)

He's not sure what he expects, but becoming Robin isn't it, and yet. There's an edge to Bruce that he's almost sure wasn't there before. Tim worries what might happen if he doesn't take up the mantle of Robin.

Tim's all too aware that he's not Dick, not what Bruce needs, but he tries. He knows Bruce looks over at him sometimes and expects to see Dick and gets Tim instead. He knows the expectations laid on him by Bruce are impossible, but he tries anyway. He's not Dick, no, but he is Robin, and that's important.

As the days and nights go by he thinks Bruce starts to see Tim for who he is. Not as quick with the witty banter as Dick, perhaps, but just as good in his own way. 

Enough.

********

But then Joker happens.

It's a little bit destruction, a little bit mayhem, all _Joker_. 

Tim knows he has options, but only one that matters.

“Robin?”

“I'm good,” Tim says, watching the numbers count down, knowing Dick's out there somewhere, Bruce searching for him. For both of them. “Find Nightwing.”

Bruce will never thank him for this, but Tim knows there's only one choice that matters here and now, and that has to be enough.

********

Tim doesn't have clear memories of what follows. He has occasional flashes of what must be memories, but can't attach meaning to them, like looking at a someone else's photo album. He sees, but there's no connection.

Ra's tells him about his people sending reports of someone matching Tim's description wandering the streets of Gotham, and Tim gets flashes of being cold, being hungry, but little else. Ra's tells him it was most likely caused by the manner of his death, physical trauma.

What he does remember is the Pit, burning, searing, voices in his head that weren't his. (He's afraid they were, and it terrifies him.) He remembers madness, all-consuming. 

Remembers some small, rational part of his mind watching events unfold like a spectator behind a plate of glass, seeing what the Pit had done to him, turned him into. Screaming, wailing, like a wild animal. The crunch of bone breaking under his hands as he fought off Ra's' people, trying to restrain him without hurting him. (The only clear memory he has of that time is of Ra's, cool and implacable, watching. Always watching.)

********

The madness subsides but never goes away completely, and Tim thinks that explains Ra's a little better. It's with him always, and on his good days it's like the murmur of voices, words indistinct, white noise. On his bad days it's like he's there again, water of the Pit filling his mouth, throat, lungs, killing him even as it saves him. 

He stays with Ra's at first, hoping there's a way to control the madness within him, and then. And then it's just easier, oddly enough, to stay because it's Ra's. 

Ra's with his agendas and plots within plots, and that's familiar enough to be comforting. Ra's who tells Tim he was saddened at the loss of so much potential when Tim died. Ra's who has always had a frankly uncomfortable amount of interest in Tim. 

He trains with Ra's' assassins, learns their names, their quirks. They teach him to become a better fighter, faster, colder. They show him how to kill, should he ever need to. Learns the best ways, the ones that will seem like an accident or nature running its course and the ones that will make a statement, will serve as a warning to others.

And as he learns these things, Ra's tells him about the life he left behind when he died. About his parents - about Haiti and Batman arriving too late to save them. About Gotham's new Robin.

The timing is more than suspect, and the gleam in Ra's' eyes confirm it. Slight touch of challenge, and something else entirely Tim can't place.

“The Detective has a new partner,” Ra's tells him one day, and shows Tim proof.

Photos of someone in familiar green and red and yellow. _His_ colors.

“He gets tights?” Tim says, the first thing he thinks to say as he flips through the photos.

Ra's raises an eyebrow, amused. “You've been replaced, it seems.”

And because he knows Ra's, Tim knows he would have been keeping a close eye on Bruce as he slipped deeper into the shadows without someone to pull him back. 

When he asks how Bruce and Jason met he laughs harder than he has in far too long. He wipes away the tears, laughter, sorrow, a little of both and gives Ra's a rueful smile. “I don't know why I was expecting anything else,” he tells him. 

And why would he? It's _Jason_. If he'd had no qualms about trying to take the tires off Tim's Redbird, there's no reason why the Batmobile would have posed an issue. (“You're all a bunch of costumed freaks anyway, right?”)

“I didn't expect this reaction.”

Tim looks at Ra's, always a man with his own agendas. Brilliant, dangerous. Ruthless. He knows there's a reason for this, Ra's putting Tim in a Lazarus Pit and caring for him afterward, beyond what Ra's has told him. (He might regret the waste of Tim's potential, but someone else – smarter, better – would have come along eventually. There's always someone smarter out there, always someone better.)

“You never really understood me,” Tim says, in answer. Not then, not now. He knows Ra's hopes to use this, Jason taking his place as Robin as a way to drive a wedge between Tim and Bruce, but. “You know I wasn't the first Robin.”

Ra's watches him and says nothing. Waiting.

“You had to know I wouldn't be the last.”

Tim looks back at the photos of Jason wearing Robin's colors like he was meant for them. He'd felt something those last few weeks, indescribable. A restlessness, uneasiness that had him unable to sleep. He'd talked to Jason, always a good sounding board, and maybe, maybe that had made a difference. Or maybe it was coincidence, he may never know.

********

Tim leaves, because he's not the person he was when he died, and while he has a feeling the Pit's madness may lead him back to Ra's one day, that's somewhere in the future. For now he needs to find out just who he's become. Not Robin, which is just as much of a relief as it is a disappointment. 

Everyone knows what Robin is, what Robin stands for. To lose it, to have nothing to hold onto, define himself by, now most of all? When he's lost, searching for the pieces of himself he'd lost as Robin, in death?

He's almost, almost surprised Ra's didn't try to get his hooks into him when Tim was more vulnerable, more willing to believe what he had to say. (Almost, but this is _Ra's_.)

Ra's gives him a parting gift, out of kindness or some intricate scheme, it's all the same in the end.

Tim sits in a bland little motel room and goes through photos of Bruce, Alfred, Jason, and Dick paying their respects. Tim's officially dead by years at this point, but still. Seeing them there, standing before his grave, it's. 

There's anger, a dull roar in the back of his mind that he know he doesn't have the right to feel. He made his choice, and given the same options now would still pick the same. 

He was Robin, Batman's partner, but _Dick_.

Dick is Bruce's son, blood be damned. Nothing would have been able to save Bruce if he'd lost Dick like that, lost him to Joker and his twisted plots.

That doesn't mean that some small part of him wishes he hadn't had to die, not like that. Heat and pressure and pain. There's anger and an aching loss because for the short time he'd had them, they were family. They were family and _his_.

Bruce, he understands because they're too alike, in some things. Alfred is Alfred, and cares too much. Jason. They knew one another before, Jason rash and stupidly brave and Tim. They hadn't been friends, exactly, but they were getting there. Late night talks on a roof or fire escape during patrol. 

Dick, though. They were never really close, not the way he is with Jason from what Tim's seen. 

Oh, Dick tried, towards the end. He came around the manor, using the flimsiest of excuses to borrow Tim for patrol in Bludhaven. He brought Tim along a few times to meet the Titans, knowing Dick was hoping he'd want to join.

And Tim. The little boy who'd idolized Dick Grayson for years welcomed that, looked forward to his visits, or calls when he couldn't get away. Alfred clearly approved, and Bruce smiled more, bonds slowly beginning to mend.

But when they met, when Dick found out that Bruce had given Tim the mantle of Robin. He'd been angry, felt betrayed and hurt and Tim. It wasn't understanding so much as acceptance, maybe. Dick had every right to feel that way, and while some small part of Tim had hoped for something else, he wasn't surprised, exactly

“Death has the tendency to alter one's perceptions when it comes to certain matters,” Tim says to himself, looking at the photos taken just last week. 

Ra's had told him that when he showed Tim the video and photos from his own funeral. More than a little on the macabre side of things, perhaps, but Tim had fought at the side of a man dressed like a bat long enough that he no longer has the right to point fingers.

In death, a man becomes a good man, beloved by family and friends no matter the faults he had in life. 

In death, a boy.

In death, a boy becomes like a second son, a little brother. (A cautionary tale.)

********

He sets up a base of sorts for himself. Nothing high and grand like the manor or the Batcave. Just a modest little Brownstone that he buys using money his parents had squirreled away in various accounts not even Bruce knew about.

The mantle of Robin never sat quite right on his shoulders, uneasy, but now there's a new Robin. One who managed to pull Bruce out of his downward spiral into madness and grief. One who has given Dick something he desperately needed without realizing. 

There's no place for Tim as Robin, even if he wanted that role back. Even if he deserved it. (Not with his time with Ra's and his assassins, the things Tim's done since.)

He doesn't have a place with Bruce and the others, but Gotham is still _his_. She's in his blood, beautiful and terrible and _his_.

Ra's told him the Pit madness affects everyone differently, the ones that make it through with their intelligence intact. He didn't go into detail, for obvious reasons, but.

Tim's lost so much without knowing, his parents for one, that what little he can lay claim to he feels fiercely protective of. To a degree he recognizes as unhealthy. Protective and territorial and there's a ruthlessness there he knew existed long before he became Robin. (He's his mother's son before all else.)

He can't claim Bruce and the others as his, not now, but Gotham. Beautiful and terrible, it's no bet who will kill who (again), but until then? She's his, to protect, guard against predation.

Tim runs into Bruce every so often, of course he does. He runs into Jason and Dick and the new Batgirl and Spoiler. He runs into them and they fight each other because they don't know who he is, and even if they did, they certainly don't approve of the way he does things.

Tim holds tight to the things Bruce taught him, tries not to kill, but sometimes. Sometimes choices need to be made. He knows Bruce would challenge him on that, on who has the right to make those kinds of choices, what gave them that right?

A life is a life is a life.

Tim thinks, selfishly maybe, he's earned that right in blood and pain and death. 

********

Batman's sadly, regretfully human, despite what the rumors have to say. He doesn't always get there in time (Tim himself, his parents), and even if he does, he can't always save the day.

Tim doesn't know if Joker's figured out who he is, or if he's just tormenting Bruce and the others. Either way, this night of all nights is not one of Tim's favorites. Knowing him, it's probably not one of Bruce's either.

Bruce is killing himself to get to Jason, hoping to right a wrong that was never his to claim, and Dick. Dick is an idiot and that's something that will never change.

“Who are you?” Dick asks, words slurred, reaching for Tim's domino.

Tim bats his hands away from his face and slips a shoulder under his arm. “Less talk, more action,” he says, carefully stepping around the outflung arm of one of Joker's thugs. (Alive for now, but choices need to be made, and out of all the ones Tim's had to make, this one is easy.)

Somewhere behind them there's a clock ticking, counting down, and the voices usually held at bay are _howling_ , panic and vengeance and madness close under his skin.

Dick snorts, chokes and coughs up blood. He tries to talk, but Tim forces him to move faster, faster, out of the warehouse and into the street. Stumbling and exhausted until they're far enough away that when the explosion comes they're safely out of the blast radius.

Then, and only then does Tim let go of Dick, helping him sit, leaning up against the side of a dumpster.

Dick watches him silently as Tim checks his injuries, jaw clenching at each new hurt he finds. 

They've been after Tim for months now, trying to figure out who he is. This new figure in Gotham working behind the scenes, flushing the gangs and criminal operations into the open, into their waiting hands. Crushing the ones who defy him under his feet, leaving them broken and bloody for the others to find.

Tim sits back on his heels and looks at Dick, battered and bruised. In no condition to protect himself, and yet.

They were never really close, but Dick tried. Dick tried and Tim idolized him for too long to be able to let go so easily. Knowing Dick tried to fix his percieved mistakes with Tim when it came to Jason helps as much as it hurts, wondering if they could have had the same kind of relationship if Tim hadn't died.

“Worst anniversary present,” Tim finds himself saying. It's been long enough, years, since that night that he can find a sliver of dark humor about it over the howling in his head. “I guess I shouldn’t expect too much from Joker, though.”

Dick stares. “...Tim?”

Over the comms he hacked into when he came back to Gotham, he can hear the others checking in. “Nightwing's safe,” Tim says, when Bruce's demand for Dick to answer go unanswered.

Not the best circumstances for this, but. Dick's alive, and so are the others and this time, this time, Joker loses.


End file.
